Transitioning from Physical Science to Data Science

In the past decade, data science has emerged as an indispensable part of many engineering organizations at technology companies. Physical scientists have a great background for this kind of work, and this has been appreciated since this still-evolving role was originally defined. Expectations for the role have continued to clarify and can differ from company to company--from product feature experiments, focused analytics work, open-ended research projects, machine learning feature development, to all of the above and more. This talk will focus on how to efficiently overcome the possible hurdles faced when making this transition. I will talk about what to do and what to avoid when leveraging your research experiences, skills to know and learn, resume and interview tips, what to look for in job descriptions, what "data science" means at different kinds of companies, and other topics. I will also discuss examples of recent projects I have worked on as a data scientist at a healthcare startup.